Indoor Gardens Are Selling Plants Short

Researchers from the Julich research institute in Germany recently trained an MRI machine at the roots of potted sugarbeet and barley in an effort to view water absorption by their roots. The team, led by Dr. Hendrik Poorter, made a very surprising find—potted plants' root systems are rarely as robust as their outdoor bretheren.

According to Poorter, the plants intrinsically sense the edge of the pot and limit the plant's growth accordingly. And it's not just barley and sugarbeets. The team tested 80 species of plant, all with the same results-double the size of the pot and gain a 50-percent increase in plant size. "The most surprising thing is that there seems to be no end to the pot limitation," explained Dr Poorter. For every plant species we looked at, pot size was the factor limiting its growth." [BBC]

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Marijuana—The Worldwide Leader in Drugs

According to a recent study conducted by the UN, marijuana was the number one drug used, grown, and sold worldwide in 2010. Somewhere in the region of 119 million to 224 million adults toked during that year. Surprisingly, the highest (teehee) user rates actually were in Australia and New Zealand, with the US and Canada taking second place. checkout the full story at Time. Image: Ian R

Oliver Stone on Weed

Director Oliver Stone is making the rounds promoting his new film Savages and stopped by CBS This Morning last Friday. Stone's drug use has been a common source of discussion in recent weeks—what with him gracing the cover of High Times and all—but he credits being a pot-smoking hippie in the jungles of Vietnam with keeping him from "becoming a beast."

"I went to Vietnam, and I was there for a long time," he explained. "[Using marijuana] made the difference between saying human or, as Michael Douglas said, becoming a beast. I'm telling you, it's rough and a lot of people in that platoon used it, not on the front line but in the back, to stay in touch with themselves. So, I look at that time in my life as really much of a life-saver."

"I was a good soldier, by the way," Stone added. "I got decorated. I was not a slouch by any means. A lot of guys were like that. We walked out of there relatively whole. A lot of guys were drinking and doing a lot of the killing that I thought was unnecessary - the raping and all that stuff, burning down villages. Guys who did the dope were much more conscious of the value of life."

Funny, that sounds suspiciously like the plot from Platoon. Image: The AP

Colombia Decriminalizes Possession of Weed and Coke for Personal Use

Colombia's getting on board the "personal use" decriminalization train that's sweeping South America. Following Uruguay's lead, Colombia's Constitutional Court ruled Friday that people found with less than 20 grams of weed and under one gram of coke will receive physical or psychological counseling rather than being prosecuted—or even arrested.

"Today's judicial ruling in Colombia represents yet another important step in the growing political and judicial movement in Latin America and Europe to stop treating people who consume drugs as criminals worthy of incarceration," Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, told Toke of the Town. "It is consistent with prior rulings by Colombian courts before former President Álvaro Uribe sought to undermine them, and also with rulings by the Supreme Court of Argentina in 2009 and other courts in the region."

As with other decriminalization efforts, the primary thrust of this ruling isn't to lower the number of users, but to reduce the strain on police forces (both in terms of work load and by reducing low-level corruption) and improve access to treatment for abusers rather than jail time.[Toke of the Town - image: Vepar5]

No, You Can't Ship Weed Via FedEx

Ok, so that great idea that you had the last time you smoked—you know, the one about having your buddy in BC "just mail you" some fine chronic using Fedex or some other such interantional shipping business? IT"S A BAD FUCKING IDEA. Not only that, it's a bad fucking idea which enough stoners have tried that—oh hey, big surprise—the Feds are onto it. Too bad that didn't stop two mental midgets in California from trying the scheme for themselves.

Police began investigating Justin J. Bowden, 27, and Idalia Chavez, 23, when they were tipped off that drug parcels were being delivered to a house in Mountain Home, near Altamont Pass in Northern Cali. The cops brought in a drug sniffing dog to inspect a suspect package before it was delivered (presumably it was the delivery man who called in the tip). Inside, the police found 10 grams of herb and some paraphernalia.

"There was evidence that approximately fourteen packages had been delivered to this address from California, and there was also evidence of payments being sent from the suspects to California for the drugs," Baxter County Sheriff John F. Montgomery said in a press statement. [Arkansas Online - Image: The AP]